BizTechTalk

Maps, Concepts, Process - Tools for Innovation

I was recently invited to present at the monthly Thursday afternoon meeting of the KM Forum, on topics relating to Mindmapping, and with a specific twist towards Knowledge Management and Innovation Management.

If you are in the Boston area, I would recommend sitting in on these sessions - the KM Forum is an organization of practitioners and thought-leaders in Knowledge Management that has been operating in the Boston area for some time now. Great people (saw some old friends), and really interesting discussions come about.

I decided to take my "hyper keynote" style a step further, and created a 130 slide deck, which ended up at about a 45 minute presentation. I've posted it via slideshare.net, and embedded it below. It holds together fairly well without voiceover, but I'll be working on an alternative version to set some more of the context.

The purpose overall of the presentation was to provide a wide view of the types of tools and methodologies that an individual could use, that teams could use, and that organizations as a whole could use. Borrowed from my background in semantic/conceptual search and auto-classification, business process analysis, mindmapping, brainstorming and winnowing techniques, visualization techniques, and innovation from a number of angles. It was a blast for me - and we had some nice discussion afterwards.

Would love any feedback based on the slide deck as it stands, and the experiences of people using any of these tools and techniques. This is an ongoing area of interest for me, and am always looking for deeper, richer information on what others are doing. Luckily, in the 40+ podcasts I've done over the last year, and my experiences of the last 13 years or so, I had quite a fountain of knowledge to pull from, which made the presentation actually quite easy to pull together.

Let's discuss - and share how you're solving problems, and creating new products/services/opportunities within your organization.

Link to presentation "Knowledge = Innovation" on slideshare.net.

Embedded version:

Q up your Distractions

Distractions abound in the daily life of a knowledge worker, and I suspect we're all in the same boat on this. If you have listened to or read previous interviews that I have done on the topics of MindMapping or Getting Things Done (GTD), I believe that both of these techniques have applicability to both individuals and in team settings.

In this interview, I speak with Nick Duffill from Gyronix (www.gyronix.com), about MindMapping, his extension of functionality to MindJet's MindManager product (listen to my previous podcast on GTD and MindManager) in the form of the product GyroQ, which I have tested out myself as well.

Distractions don't stop - the task is how to keep them from overwhelming you as you strive to juggle the work that needs to get done, the ideas (strategic or otherwise) that pop up while you're busy "doing real work" (tactically), and make sure that you have a systematic way to capture and then knock off the thoughts and work that surround you. I believe in this interview, Nick and I pluck some useful fruit, and I encourage all listeners (on PCs only sadly) grab a trial copy of GyroQ and MindManager, and have a go at using these techniques in your work.

If you are using these tools and techniques yourself, or have alternative methods, I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to comment here, and let's mutually raise the bar here! There is much to learn, and neither Nick nor I know it all.

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Mind Mapping Tips from A Master

This interview between myself, Dan Keldsen, and Phil Chambers, Founder and Managing Director of Learning Technologies Ltd (www.learning-tech.co.uk), and current reigning World Mind Mapping Champion, centers around how to get started in Mind Mapping, as well as what the typical stumbling blocks are to successfully *doing* Mind Mapping.

Rather than talk about this in the abstract, I am using myself as a guinea pig to discuss common pitfalls (which I've run into myself - glad to hear I'm not alone), the science behind the techniques of Mind Mapping (good to get a reminder that this isn't just "random stuff" that Tony Buzan had come up with), and much more.

We're all in this together, so as always, I invite all listeners to participate in the discussion, either by posting a comment or throwing a trackback from your blog to this blog (www.BizTechTalk.com), or be leaving me a voice message at my call-in number of 781-268-0716 and leave me a message regarding this post. Any interesting comments I get I will post to the blog (unless you prefer not to get your 15 megabytes of fame).

NOTE: There is a limit of 2 minutes per recording, so you will need to be somewhat brief. Brevity is the soul of wit - and a key to Mind Mapping, so consider it good exercise!

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Mindmapping and Getting Things Done

Mindmapping and Getting Things Done - For this session, I'm continuing my discussions around MindMapping, and am speaking with Michael Scherotter, Solution Platform Product Manager at Mindjet (www.mindjet.com), makers of MindManager, a mindmapping package for Macintosh or Windows platforms, and who also runs the Mindjet Labs (www.mindjetlabs.com), and with Richard Love, Senior Director of Quality Systems at Stiefel (www.stiefel.com) a Pharmaceutical company - who is a user of MindManager. As you may guess from the title, we will be discussing Getting Things Done, both the concept as espoused by David Allen in his book Getting Things Done (or GTD as many know it), but also other applications of MindMapping, such as in doing research, manipulating Google search results, managing projects, designing databases, agile development, and so on.

As always, I invite all listeners to participate in the discussion, either by posting a comment or throwing a trackback from your blog to this blog (www.BizTechTalk.com), or be leaving me a voice message at my call-in number of 781-268-0716 and leave me a message regarding this post. Any interesting comments I get I will post to the blog (unless you prefer not to get your 15 megabytes of fame). NOTE: There is a limit of 2 minutes per recording, so you will need to be somewhat brief. Have your caffeine fix in advance of the call ;).

Enjoy!


MP3 File

The mindmaps referenced in this podcast are below (as screenshots) - clicking on the thumbnails will expand them to larger/readable sizes.

Screenshots:

Getting Things Done MindMap

CASE tool MindMap

Think Before You Spend, Mindmapping for Marketing

Think Before You Spend, Mindmapping for Marketing - an interview with Dr. Ian Howells, Chief Marketing Officer with Alfresco.com - an open-source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution provider. This interview focuses on mindmapping, how Ian uses it in everyday work and life, and also tangents off into open-source versus closed solutions, David vs. Goliath, Crossing the Chasm, and several other topics. Great fun, this ranks as one of my favorite podcasts of the 18 or so that I've recorded thus far. Enjoy and discuss!


MP3 File